Ryan Lowe was delighted to see his Preston North End side prevail against Coventry City in what he described as a “great game of football” between the two teams at the Coventry Building Society Arena.
Emil Riis came off the bench in the second half to score just under a quarter of an hour from time as both sides had chances to score before that point in an entertaining clash.
North End had gone three scoreless draws since their last league goal, courtesy of Brad Potts at Luton Town just over a fortnight ago, but it was the performance against Sky Blues that was as enjoyable as any for the manager on Wednesday night.
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Match Report: Coventry City 0 PNE 1
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He told iFollow PNE: “Everyone says we’re delighted with the goal, and of course we are, but the performance was fantastic. The changes have been made to freshen things up and you have guys coming in, quality. I thought every one of the guys that came on the pitch was fantastic today.
“I thought it was a great game of football between two good teams. It was from start to finish. They dominated big parts of possession, so did we. I thought the boys were fantastic at everything. they did, everything we asked them to do, they did.
“Every one of them at one man today was fantastic. I’m really happy with the performance and obviously we’re very happy with the three points and the goal.
“I thought we could have finished it towards the end there, some tired legs, especially Troy [Parrott] by the way, the kid made a good block. Overall happy with performance, fantastic.
Riis’ impact from the bench was felt with the winning goal and the manager spoke in detail about the leader in his post-match interview.
“I had decided to play Ched [Evans] the day before,” he continued. “Me and Emil have had conversations for the past few days and he has come to me and told me now, but I had already made up my mind in terms of squad and squad.
“He knows where he wants to be now and I told him if he continues to be like this and stays and works hard he will score another 20 goals. He knows what we are doing, I know what he is doing. fact, we certainly don’t want to lose him and he knows it, but when you’re a good player, you have speculation on you.
“We made the choice to keep him and he has now chosen to put his head down and work hard for Preston North End and I’m delighted he’s doing that.”
Emil and attacking partner Parrott had further scoring opportunities after the game’s lone goal and Ryan was pleased with his team’s chance creation in the contest.
“I’m happy with the chances, I don’t know how many it was, ten or 11, four or five on target. I always said from the start that my team would create plenty of chances, and a lot of chances and chances. opportunities to score goals, and we did it again tonight.
“Fair play to the group, they’ve been fantastic and it’s a bit depressed sometimes when you don’t score goals and the guys can get a little deflated about it. But I said they have to keep going, keep going to believe that you are going to score goals and they certainly do.
It was another busy midweek for the gaffer, who also watched Birmingham City’s clash with Norwich City last night ahead of the Blues’ visit to Deepdale at the weekend.
“We will be tomorrow to recover because we still have a game on Saturday against Birmingham. I was there watching them last night and seeing how they were playing.
“They have good players and a new manager. [John Eustace] who’s trying to do it the right way so we know it’s going to be a tough game but all the games are in this league. There are no ‘gimmes’ or easy games, we have to put this to bed, enjoy the moment and enjoy the three points and then do it again because it’s relentless.
Watch more from Ryan on iFollow PNE.
